Community Tip - Protecting Approval Mixes With SoundCloud

Here is another community tip, this one from Stefano Bonzi with a clever way to stop clients from downloading and using your approval mixes.

I get a lot of work over the internet since I offer mixing and tuning services. Many times I get clients that want to listen to the mixes and I have been debating what’s the best way to show them the product without getting it stolen (many people are happy with mp3s) and without having to cut the sound or add extra beeps to the files (I hate that).

So recently I realized that SoundCloud is my best friend for this scenario and it works straight from Pro Tools.

All I have to do is to ask the client for their SoundCloud account id, then upload the files and make them “private” and leave the box “downloads disabled” the way it is, with a red X, then add the client to the list of people that can listen to the file.

This way I can show them my progress and I don’t open it for download until they’ll have paid. Also they can add comments right on the timeline so I always know what part of the song they are referring to in case there is something that needs to be changed.

I know, there is software that allows people to record sound internally, but I believe the percentage of people willing to go through that is low enough to be happy with my method. Maybe this is old news for the majority of people but I find it so useful that I wanted to share in case somebody wasn’t aware of it yet.

Mike says - Stefano, thanks for this, I didn’t know about this feature in SoundCloud. Does anyone else use a streaming type of solution to stop clients from downloading approval mixes?